patents

Qualcomm got slapped with a massive fine related to its patent licensing practices today. The company, unsurprisingly, disputes the findings of the Korean Fair Trade Comission. The KFTC, for its part, doesn’t care.

Could AMD and Intel be working on a cross-licensing deal? Reports say yes. It wouldn’t be the first time the two companies have signed cross-licensing agreements, though past details have typically focused on x86 CPUs rather than GPU technology.

Water cooler manufacturer Asetek is flexing its muscle and demanding that both AMD and Gigabyte cease selling hardware that it claims violates its patents. AMD, at least, is disputing that claim and shows no interest in pulling the Fury X off the market.

After years of relentless litigation, it seems the mobile/smartphone patent war might be drawing to a close. Rockstar, a patent trolling company owned by Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Ericsson, and BlackBerry, has agreed to cancel the lawsuits it had filed against Google and most Android device makers. This follows on from news this summer that Apple and Google had agreed to drop all lawsuits between the two companies, and Apple and Samsung agreed to drop all lawsuits outside the US.

You know that weird quirk of physics where toast and iPhones always fall face down? Well, I have good news: Your next iPhone might have the ability to change its angle mid-fall, so that it lands on its side or back, saving the brittle glass display. Apple is researching a whole host of weird and wonderful ways of correcting the trajectory of a free falling smartphone — such as using the phone’s vibration motor to change the fall angle slightly, or mall canisters of compressed gas to act as retro thrusters that can slow the descent.